O'Dayspring from the East, Brightness of the everlasting light, Son of justice, come to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death!

Indeed. In the past two days, my sister has told me that her specialist is pretty sure that her cancer has metasticized, another Seattle friend wrote to say that husband has just been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and I sat at table after Mass this morning with an older couple who had just lost their son to brain cancer a month before.

In contrast, a close friend also wrote to say that their eldest son has just found out that he will become a father for the first time next year.

In so many ways, all of us - whether currently in good health or not, joyful or stunned or grieving, sit in the shadow of darkness and the shadow of death. How desperately we need the mercy, the hope, the healing, the deliverance, the light that the Son of Justice comes to bring us.